Vous serez ma proie
by TheRealSnowWhite
Summary: This world is full of impossible things, and the silent girl is one of them. This is not a story about love, or about crime solving, but revolves around an innocent looking girl, an orange and a terrible secret. [This is an old fic, but I promised an epilogue at one point. I was inspired after watching the latest series to finally finish what I started. Mild series 3 spoilers]
1. Speak My Language

Let us examine a stranger.

She is sat, quite alone, in the corner of a busy chainstore coffee shop. She has ordered something, some concoction with too much milk and far too much foam for his tastes, but it sits untouched in front of her, growing colder by the second. She isn't reading, or checking her phone, or conducting in any of the frivolities common to her sex. She is sat completely still. Doing absolutely nothing at all. She is entirely content to sit doing nothing, without moving an inch, not flinching a muscle. It'd be difficult to tell if she was even breathing to the casual observer. Perhaps she wasn't. She didn't feel the need to validate her existence through actions. She is like a particularly lovely statue, cold, unmoving.

The people sat on tables near her didn't acknowledge her presence. They sat and gossiped and drank coffees and troughed down baked goods, ignoring the silent figure sat amongst them. The staff even ignored her smoking. She held a thin holder, trailing clouds of grey smoke around her like an abstract halo, flouting the smoking ban most obviously. She took a drag as if she hated it; sucking viciously, then spitting out the smoke as if she couldn't bear it, every ten minutes or so, allowing the cigarette to burn down to a stub, bleeding ash across the table. Why did no one come to stop her? Occasionally a barrister wandered over, only to return with a most bemused look upon their face. It was very odd. Surely she would stop if someone only asked her? She looked so very innocent and amenable. If she were to pick a card it would inevitably be the maiden, every time.

He will see her draw the death card once, only once, never to be repeated. This girl, this still virgin, is death and the maiden mixed together, in flesh and blood. This is her secret, and he knows it without a word passing from his lips to her ears. It is written on her face, her limited movements, her clothing. She is far too virtuous an image to be true.

She frequents this shop every Thursday at ten until one, happy in her own company, and never, ever putting a morsel past her lips. They are strange lips. They are fleshy, and the colour of dead meat, clashing fearfully with the flour whiteness of her skin. A whore's mouth, he thinks reluctantly, the same thought repeated again and again in his mind. It is what he thought the first time he saw her as he passed the window. That mouth was the first thing he noticed about her, what intrigued him the most. Those lips were repellent, disgusting, and oddly compelling. A fascination edged over the repulsion; there was small, overpowering part of him that desperately wanted to touch those lips, just for a second, just to know what they felt like, what they tasted like. It was such an unusual, peculiar desire that sometimes he wondered if it was even his, whether somehow the silent girl had put the thought inside his head.

He saw her every Thursday for four months. Then he decided to find out something more about her. His curiosity was strangely single-minded on the issue; normally he would have grown bored of this a long time ago. But her piquant strangeness had captured his fleeting attention and pinned it down. She seemed so normal she was abnormal. There was nothing he could possibly find out about her from the brief sightings. The only solution was an orange.

* * *

**Frankly, there has been a shockingly few horror based Sherlock stories on this site; this is my contribution, and I hope that you find it somewhat enjoyable. It's a supernatural story that never uses the word 'supernatural'. There is no romance and it certainly doesn't end happily. I hope that you enjoy and review. If not, I hope you review anyway and inform me of your criticisms. They are incredibly useful.**


	2. Your Silent Face

He entered the shop and threw an orange across the room at her. It hit her square in the chest, so perfect she might have had a target emblazoned across her front. The girl didn't react at all, merely stared at him as if affronted by the fruit flinging habits of men in London.

That was very telling.

People reacted in one of two ways to something like that: they either flinched or caught the orange. The girl had acknowledged the projectile as not being a threat at all and simply ignored it. Why would she do that? It was the only piece of information he solidly knew about her, and it was driving him slowly insane. He took a candid photo of her once, and it was stuck to the living room mirror. It taunted him. Whatever he was doing, he would look up and see her plain brown eyes staring back at him, knowing that he failed in identifying her. It infuriated him. It was a distraction. It was an inspiration when he was frustrated, though he would be incredibly loath to admit it to anyone, even himself. He would play his violin furiously some nights, her eyes boring into his, her bland half smile magnifying some sort of fire in the music.

* * *

It was midnight, a stifling hot summer's night. There was no air in the streets at all, no people, no anything apart from heat radiating from the paving slabs. He was waiting on a street corner, quite alone, head full of thoughts, clad only in his shirt sleeves.

"Why did you throw that orange at me?"

He nearly leapt out of his skin. How had she crept up on him? He'd heard nothing, not even a whisper to indicate her presence. And how on Earth had she found him? How in God's name had she been able to track him down?

"That was easy enough. I sniffed you out after you threw that damn orange at me – I bloody had to, bloody fruit flinger." Her voice wasn't anything like how he'd imagined it; her appearance was quite poised and cool, belying her broad barrow-boy accent. Cockney to her high teeth. He'd accidently voiced his question aloud, and she had answered him simply enough, if a little enigmatically. She stood behind him in a beam of moonlight that came down in a perfect line. Her skin shone in the light… no, it was really only ever made to glow. The curious whiteness of her skin was magnified, almost pulsating with that fiendish odd mouth of hers. A mess of tawny brown hair, a figure considered beautiful at the turn of the century, a snubbed nose and funny overlarge eyes – that was all she was. There was something he'd noticed but never really paid attention before; her lips did not match the rest of her body. They had a vivid, ruddy vitality that simply clashed with the pallor of her skin. Her flesh looked waxy and diseased in the poor light, the crimson smear that formed her lips strangely, unnaturally healthy. There was something wrong about her, something wasting away inside perhaps. It seemed obvious in her face, a message there for anyone to read - why had he not noticed it before?

"You're shorter than I thought you were." He gave a little smile, feeling oddly exposed now they were finally face to face. She raised her bare arms, dipping them in the light, mesmerised by the glow radiating by her own flesh, seemingly disinterested in him at all.

"I'm short for my height. It's not my fault if your mother was impregnated by a giraffe now is it?" She spun around on the spot slowly, balancing on her toes. She was wearing plain ballet shoes and tweed shorts with bare legs, a concession to the overwhelming heat.

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?" She mimicked, refusing to meet his eyes. "I should be asking the questions here; after all, it's you who've been stalking me. Coming down to the coffee shop when I have my weekly, throwing things at me, taking pictures… I thought I'd turn the tables by finding you out, getting you to leave me the hell alone. I don't like being followed." The last words are barked out, like a command. He actually wants to obey her. There's something deep inside of him that wanted quite eagerly, quite happily obey her words and follow after her willingly. His defiance edged over the willingness.

"I'm not stalking you, I was simply… can you stop that ridiculous spinning around? Can you just stop for a second? Just stop!" He reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her antics, wrapping his fingers round her slim wrist, which was doll like in his hands.

Her skin is ice cold.

It's beyond ice, beyond stone, so cold it feels like it's burning his fingertips.

The air enclosing them feels like breathing through bathwater, the temperature so hot that he can feel sweat drops rolling down his neck and back, droplets falling between his shoulder blades and from the tip of his nose.

Her eyes are a mixture of fear and defiance, her bottom lip hanging aghast revealing bright white teeth that are spindly in her mouth. Her lips look almost purple in contrast, fleshy, ugly, her gums like raw meat compared to her pixie sharp teeth.

There is no pulse. He cannot feel a pulse at all beating away in her veins.

Now he knows the secret too.

She is a corpse.

* * *

**So now you know the secret also. I shall let you into another secret: you will never find out what, or whom, the girl exactly is. The story isn't about that, about some great conspiracy of secret supernatural governments because that isn't interesting. Neither is this story about love. Just enjoy some light horror with none of the modern cannotations. Thanks for the reviews I've received, although I would greatly enjoy some more ;)**


	3. Romance Is Dead

A corpse of a lovely young woman.

As impossible as it could be that is what she was.

A standing, walking, talking corpse looking up at him, terrified and angry. He looked at the arm in his grasp. It was like an under-skin of mauve pearlised satin like a day old body that has begun to rot. Marblised. He stares at it then drops her arm, just lets it go and fall back down to her side. She finally meets his eyes now, dragging them up slowly, round as pebbles with fear.

"I can explain. Please let me explain!" She licks those strange teeth of hers with a pink tongue. They look like spikes of spun sugar. They glisten with spittle.

"What explanation could there possibly be? That there's a medical condition that means you have no body temperature and no pulse? I guess some serious form of anaemia could make you this pale, but this mottling on the underside of your arm is inexplicable. There is no scientific or logical explanation I can possibly think of, unless I am severely behind the times and some groundbreaking phenomenon capable of bringing back the dead has just been made commonplace." He sunk to the pavement, collapsing on the kerbstone, cradling his head in his hands. It had been his absolute pride and joy, his machine, yet here it did know nothing of this situation and what could make it happen.

Small, coarse, ice cold hands settled on his shoulders, coming down, wrapping themselves around his neck. It is not a violent act. It is an affectionate gesture; she is hugging him. It's like a surprise embrace by a very small iceberg. She is strong as well; he can't pull away from her loathsome grasp, no matter how much he tries to pull away.

"T'aint nothing to do with science nor logic. It's beyond any of the senses; neither touch nor taste nor sight nor sound. I am that I am. That's in the Bible. I'll tell you what happened: I died and I didn't stop living. I don't know why, don't know how. True facts that."

"When did this- God, I'm talking as if this is all above board and real. How old are you, nineteen, twenty? Perfectly able to conduct little fantasy worlds inside that head of yours still. Fantasist. You've got to be a fantasist." He said this as calmly as he could, but he feared his voice shook a little. God he wanted a cigarette right now. She snickered a little at his words.

"You think I'm twenty? I'll tell you right now that I'm old for my age. I'm older than you and I'm older than your parents and I'm older than their parents. And I'm no fantasist. I'm a realist, believe you me. And I am as real as you are." She removes her hands now, and sits beside him on the kerb. She holds out a hand in greeting. "Joyce Gorski. You might as well know my name along with the secret." He shakes it, finding the coolness a welcome relief to the unrelenting heat. Her surname clashed oddly with her anglicised first name, perhaps revealing far more about her history than she'd have intended. Polish. Is her father Polish, her grandfather? Perhaps even a married name. She's old enough – was old enough – could be… it's hard to wrap his mind around it, even within the confines of his own head. How old could she be? A hundred years old? Older?

Sherlock Holmes. I would have found it out eventually. If you'd bothered to follow me properly, you'd have found out that's what I do. Consulting detective."

"Consulting detective." The newly identified Joyce snorted with derision. "What the hell kind of job is that? Might as well declare yourself prince unicorn of tinkly winkly town and have done. And you call me a fantasist!"

* * *

It was a strange little meeting on the warm flagstones, both of them asking and answering questions without revealing too much if they could help it, before parting ways. She judged him sensible enough to not begin shouting to anyone he could find about her. But, he'd asked, surely there have been others who found out what you were if you're as old as you say you are? Of course people have done. That's why I were scared you found out. It doesn't end well for them, and blood's a difficult stain to remove. He didn't know if she was joking and thought it best not to ask.

Every week, like clockwork, the girl still frequented that same shop, that same chair and table, that same cup of coffee. He didn't know how she could possibly afford it; how and where could she work? He now dropped in to see her, buying a ridiculously overpriced drink in a cup that was far too small. Her smoking played merry hell with his temptations, which she silently mocked with her gleaming teeth smiles. They discussed trite little things that they both found absurd, like money and morality. She told him the owl was a baker's daughter, a reference he didn't understand, and sometimes he discussed a case he was conducting at the time, enjoying the unique comments she would make. Other people were so concerned with pathetic frivolities, whereas she luxuriated in knowledge of death and how it passed.

"Everyone dies from suffocation. Absolutely everyone. Did you know that? All the cells in your body die from lack of oxygen, no matter what the primary cause of death is." Her arms were folded on the table, her chin resting on her forearms, eyes peeping up at him with a glint of mischief. "Tell that woman down in the morgue that, though she don't need any impressing. She smells proper interesting."

"You went to speak to Molly."

"Not speak. Just to have a look around. It's proper interesting to look at dead bodies when you are one. And she's a whole symphony of thoughts and smells. I reckon I know more about her than you do just through using my nose."

"How did you die?"

She stops, blinks, rubs her nose furiously, something he has learnt is a tell for when she thinks someone is prying too close to the quick.

"That's none of your damn beeswax how I died. Why, you want to be like me?" There it is again, that commanding, imperious tone, clearly indicating that this was not a topic she was happy to talk about. She rubbed her neck subconsciously, pushing the neckline of her t-shirt down. She had a scar across the flesh, pin drop wounds like she had been pricked by thorns. Hardly a fatal wound but something she was embarrassed about. Maybe that was why she always wore men's clothing, ballet pumps and tweed shorts aside. Bowler hats, brown wing tips, white shirts with braces.

"I wore skirts enough the last sixty years, that break in the seventies aside. Not that I did much in the seventies! I spent ten years getting stoned and listening to Led Zeppelin. Waste of time. Waste of time. Cause that's all I have now. Time. I don't sleep, don't eat – what else is there for me?"

That was a question best answered in time, actual real time. For when she revealed the scar on her neck, she revealed a thin gold chain, from which was hung a plain gold ring.

He always knew there had to be a reason why she came here every week. And he found out the week afterwards. There was the dead girl, displayed in the window, with a young man. A living young man, he'd made sure to check the pulse in his neck. They kissed, before the man gathered up his coat and briefcase and left the building. He knocked Sherlock by accident on the way out, stammered an apology, and ran off into the traffic. Joyce had vanished from the shop when he turned round. She was good at disappearing. A few dark afternoons in the winter he'd tried to walk her home, only to find that the silent figure following at his elbow had dissipated into the ether without him noticing.

"Luke? Oh, that's just my fiancée, why do you ask?" She tried being deliberately evasive when he asked her, trying anything she could to divert him, even calling him a ratbag hammer-headed nosy bastard, but he winkled the truth out of her eventually.

"Your _fiancée_? How in God's name do you find a fiancée? You're dead. He'd notice that in time."

She blew a smoke ring at him. "It's sweet that you're so naïve about these things. I'm not the only special thing out there in the big wide world; the things that are out there, the life that thrives is blinding. Of course he knows what I am. He'd be a fool to not notice wouldn't he?"

"Necrophilia is such a wonderful trait to have. It's lucky you found someone who wants to indulge. Better not let him find the city morgue."

Joyce made a face at him. "Jealousy is a disgusting trait to have don't-cha-know?"

"And since when has necrophilia been an acceptable lifestyle choice?"

* * *

**Thank you for your lovely and supportive reviews; I highly doubt I'd have continued with this story if it hadn't been as well received. And I did say this story isn't about love - but that only referred to Sherlock and (the newly identified) Joyce. Luke doesn't feature much, frankly. **


	4. When I'm Bored

The meetings grew more fleeting, and intermittent. Topics changed from death and carnage to boring domestic matters. The 'happy couple' were busy planning their first home, the things they needed to buy, wedding plans, flower arrangements, the kitchen sink and some taps. A strange quality would suffuse her features; make her eyes glow and sparkle with something that almost approached life. Her desire to know the intimate details of his crimes waned and trickled away, and she could barely summon interest. That made two of them. He hardly found wedding chatter scintillating conversation.

During this period he finally discovered where she lived, a tiny bedsit (that seemed to have been converted from a previous owner's walk in warderobe) on the outskirts of London which was decorated solely with packing crates and flimsy scarves. There was a fug of incense and blood in the room so thick it might have been possible to cut it for use as building materials. The room, like her, was utterly devoid of signs of life. This was somewhere a person came to sit, that was all. There was nothing unique and identifying, nothing that would make him swear it as belonging to her. Beanbags that wept their innards across the wooden floorboards were piled up against the plain white walls. A plain watercolour in a cheap pine frame. A single mattress on the floor. A chipped sink, the porcelain turned the colour of tobacco spit, the taps rusted and squeaky. Multiple washing lines had been set up around it, little flimsy things made of string, displaying her limited rotation of clothes. It was a dead room, abandonned a long time ago, and wheezing with age at the edges. It was empty and unloved; after all, Joyce didn't sleep. Or eat. Or do much. That was how she could afford the things she did buy; she didn't need heating, water, food, and all those other things that build up. She could squander away what she owned on fashion magazines, faux pearl necklaces that smelt of someone else's Chanel perfume, head scarves and French cigarettes if she wanted.

It became somewhat of a bolthole for him; when he needed to hide, or provide a diversion, she could be relied upon to let him up into that box room, whatever the time, whatever the reason. She genuinely didn't seem to care - or was glad for the distraction.

She visited Baker Street many, many times. Unfortunately. She was like a stray cat, in that she refused to leave and hankered down into the furniture. And shed hairs. He answered the door, finding her stood there entirely unannounced. Sorry, I felt lonely, thought I'd follow your scent. She waltzed into the flat, introduced herself to John, and fully ingratiated herself into the apartment. To his disgust, they shared John's beers and got themselves thoroughly tipsy, watching James Bond movies late into the morning and loudly discussing the relative quantum mechanics of villainy in the visual media. That seemed to involve whether or not the character had facial hair, or was played by Christopher Lee. How did she drink? How on earth did she drink? What logic there was to her state didn't seem to apply. She just sat there, conducting her argument with the neck of her beer bottle, waving off diagnoses of anaemia. He tried banning her from the place, he really honestly tried but she never listened, just kept slinking back when he didn't expect it. He blamed Mrs Hudson. He honestly did. She seemed to think there was something in it all and kept inviting her round whenever she could. Sometimes he'd be in the middle of something, and turn around and there she was! Just sat in one of the armchairs, reading some trashy magazine with her knees tucked up under her chin.

He tripped over the coffee table with surprise the first time that happened. He actually did. He didn't let her surprise him after that. It was personal, and professional, pride. He couldn't keep letting Joyce get the better over him. She was worse than Mycroft. Not intellectually speaking though. She was dumber than a box of hammers. Couldn't even write. That was a surprise development. She could read readily enough, quite happily, but quaked at the thought of writing something.

"It's a basic skill. How is it that you can read, but not write?" He felt like such a hypocrite with those words but ignored the nagging worries.

"I dunno. It's much easier to read than to write, and I never learnt much at school. I left when I were thirteen, got married when I were seventeen. Kid at eighteen. That was my life, set up for me." They'd uncharacteristically gone out for milkshakes in a garishly decorated fast food outlet, filled with screaming kiddies and balloons. He didn't know why there were there and suspected Joyce of mind-altering powers (not for the first time mind; she had a skill for making everything around her go how she wanted). She chewed the top of her straw between those sharp teeth, deep in thought. The 'rule' about whether she could eat or not appeared to be reliant on her mood. She snaffled sugar lumps at the coffee shop when she thought no one was watching and often appeared to rifle through his fridge at home.

That was not a good day.

* * *

**Yes, there actually is a plot; this isn't just some random scribblings. And I think you can tell that it's not going to be good, and it certainly isn't going to be happy. Thank you for your reviews, and please, as always, bring up anything you have a problem with.**


	5. A Pink Dream

They ended up spending the entire evening in that noxious place, making fun of the employees loudly (and rather obnoxiously) until they were kicked out at midnight by a disgruntled wage slave wearing far too much make-up and not enough self respect. Too late, too late, in two different ways. They're out too late in a bad area of town, and he realises it far too late. Its pitch black, the cold whipping the breath from his lungs in clouds. Joyce has no clouds, and it's like she dissolves into the ether, apart from the unending chatter. He attempts to hail a taxi cab while she walks off, bored with the entire operation and determined to not aid him in any way.

There's a gang of youths at the end of the road. They've been drinking, he can smell it from here. They're bigging each other up, egging themselves to do something outrageous and dangerous. They begin to look up, to see Joyce walking down the street. She's lighting a cigarette, the flame alighting her features.

"Oi, you gotta fag on you?" One grabs her sleeve and she shakes him off with a snort.

"Nah, bugger off the scrounge." That wasn't a good idea, that wasn't good at all. Now the group are angry, and Joyce presents a very easy target indeed; a young girl with no strength, her sole companion a slight man with a wasp waist and no muscles They've been gearing for a fight, a gang together, individuals forgotten in the crush for social identity, a veritable swarm. They start pushing on her, shouting things into her face, and she shouts back, pushes back, and before Sherlock can do something, before he could possibly intervene, there's a gleam of metal cutting through the air, and the guys are bellowing and a flower of blood spreads across Joyce's chest. It's black and liquid and then she falls to the floor, dead as a doornail, or close to.

What should he do? What can he do? The lads are laughing, and one of them turns to him now, knows he's been there the entire time and they can focus on him now. There are a lot of them and there's only one of him.

"What are you staring at?" Sherlock doesn't reply. "I said, what the fuck are you staring at?"

"Me. I think he's staring at me." The group part like the Red sea. In the midst is Joyce, risen again like some tainted idol, black blood glistening down the front of her shirt, the knife blade shining still in her chest. They all stare. How should they react? None of them have seen the dead rise amongst them, unsteady on her feet, head flopping sickeningly onto her shoulders.

Her mild face, that innocent face changes into a grotesque parody of humanity in the silence. Pure fury. That's what her face looks like now. Her eyes are dark pits, the brow lowered, her mouth stretching wide like an animal's, deep red flesh and bright white teeth. And then she strikes in the span of a whisper, a minature whirlwind in a suburban street. He has never seen anything move so fast, her edges blur away with her movement. The knife is pulled from her chest and pushed – or thrown – cut through the air into the throat of one bully boy. Then she roars and hisses, breaking one man's neck with a flick of her wrist, grabbing at the boys as they begin to scream and try to run, and they are broken apart like toys, still screaming, the blood spattering across Sherlock's coat in short spurts, and Joyce sinks her teeth deeply into the neck of the very last one, tearing and pulling at the flesh until it comes away in her mouth.

This took at most half a minute. She stayed sucking at his neck for a minute more, greedily feeding like a hungry infant, blood cascading like a waterfall down her chin and front. She is painted with the stuff, a sister dipped in blood, yet she refuses to let the body drop. She surfaces with a slurp, reluctantly dropping the drained corpse at her feet like a naughty child caught with a stolen toy. Blood pours from her mouth. She is bloated, simply bloated with it and cannot swallow anymore. It is disgusting and he cannot tear his eyes away. It is the most interesting thing he has seen in years.

"Run." Her voice is choked, her teeth pink, blood caked in the crevices of her face. She begins to lick her arms, hands, cheeks with the fastidious wince of a cat; her tongue is pink and kittenish, a sharp difference from how the gruesomeness of the scene. She doesn't sound like herself. She sounds like a cheap parody, guttural and animalistic.

"Excuse me?"

"Run. Get away from here. I was hungry, so very hungry, and now I have feasted, I have gorged, and I want _more_."

* * *

**Uh, I guess this might reveal exactly what Joyce is I suppose, but I havn't really decided what she could be. A murderess? For sure. And who catches interesting murderers?**


	6. Don't You Forget About Me

He was handed the case of course. Six people to be killed just like that? With no evidence of anyone else being present at the crime scene? Nothing on the scant CCTV, and the blood being drained from their bodies? If there ever was a case for Sherlock Holmes, then this was it. And as usual, he knew the answer to it all. There would be no question of whether or not he should 'turn her in'; his pride required him to do it. It did not matter that he knew her, and was reasonably fond of her. The only problem would be other people finding out about her existence. The fact she had trusted him above anyone else was rather satisfying, that it was something that he, and only he, was privy to. He did not bother to consider how Joyce might react to this betrayal, if she would react at all. It might be possible that she would kill him too, but he doubted this. He hadn't stabbed her after all. Maybe just metaphorically, the cold blade moving to her white back, and he saw in his mind, his own hands turning it in the wound.

She buzzed him into the apartment. Regular, usual. She did not know that effectively, she was being hunted.

"Look, Joyce, I've been given the case, so if you promise to not rip my head off, I'll give it a day and then I shall bring you in. I don't know how you'll swing it, but I can help … what the hell is going on here?" The dull little room was a flurry of activity, a hurricane of movement; the packing crates had disappeared, replaced with a series of tatty suitcases tied together with knotted string which were being crammed with books and ornaments and thin scarves and bits of jewellery and bright clothes. Joyce was sat crossed legged on her water stained mattress amongst the mess, rifling through dog eared papers, pinning her hair into a messy bun, a overlarge pair of sunglasses balancing on her nose whilst Luke attached labels to suitcases. His own were stacked in the corner, neater and newer than Joyce's by far. A stranger was doing the actual packing, and Sherlock saw in her the now recognisable signs of Joyce's condition. She was small and slight like Joyce, but thin, the bones of her skull protruding through her mousy face, her large ears adding to the rodent effect. She wore a tired grey dress that matched cold, rather clinical eyes that looked like gun metal that fixed themselves solely on Sherlock's eyes with a severe, serious fasination. She fidgetted with her hands, cracking her knuckles with bony fingers, achingly slowly, one by one, in a way that was almost threatening.

"Oh, I'm packing." She smiled negligently, and screwed up some papers in her hands. They had been vigorously scrubbed, the nails cut down to the quick, the cuticles stripped back. They had killed last night. Those slender hands had torn someone apart.

"We're going away before they catch Joy. Nice and safe." The only words Luke ever said to him. They were cheery, jovial, the words of a man who had long ago accepted that his blushing bride-to-be was a murderer long before his conception.

"But I'm already found out." Joyce's dead limpid eyes met his. "Sherlock's ready to take me to Scotland Yard. Isn't that right? You weren't going to give it a day. You were going to take me now, hoping that I would be subdued and quiet. Because you're afraid of me now, I can smell it, rolling off you in waves. Scared of little me. Isn't that the truth?"

"Found out, caught out, found out, caught out." The girl packing breathes these words in a funny singsong whisper, a strange ecstasy suffusing her plain features. She licked her lips with a kittenish tongue, and began chomping her teeth together like an animal.

"Shut it Evangeline." Joyce's command silences the creature, which turns away sulkily. She walks towards him and smiles. It is the same half smile that he first saw on those oddly compelling lips, lips which he has seen tainted with blood, crimson, obscene. "I knew you would. I'm not stupid, I could tell that your pride wouldn't let me go. But I cannot be caged away. They will examine me, and take me apart, and put me together again to find out what I am. It shall destroy me - not that you would care about that."

"I've already told the police where to find you. Texted Lestrade already. They're on their way."

Her face does not change. She acknowledges this with a slight nod. "Clever man. Can't let the murderess get away. How noble of you. What shall you take as a reward? Perhaps you should take a kiss." Her hands, once cold but now warmed with the blood of the living, grasp his head, pull him towards her and plant one before he can protest. Her lips taste of copper. They are fleshy and thick, warm and cold. They are disgusting, the lips of a dead woman. Ach! He can feel her sharp teeth through the kiss, sharp as knives hidden in her mouth. How can she cope? How can Luke cope? A single drop of blood forms, they have cut his lips, he cannot pull away, she is too strong! And then everything went black as Evangeline's small fist met the back of his skull with a dull crunch.

* * *

He wore up twenty minutes later to a room full of disgruntled police officers – and no Joyce. Her party had taken everything they could and completely disappeared, leaving no trace. They had left him in the centre of the empty room to be discovered by the police. It was humiliating, totally and utterly. He was the butt of jokes for weeks. Where could he begin to look? Joyce could have fled anywhere and everywhere, no doubt sheltered by more of her kind. How many were there? Did they have some kind of system, a means by which they operated outside the usual spheres of influence and existed beyond human power? She had told him once there was more out there that he could possibly understand, more than the senses could detect. She was living under the radar somewhere with her kind. For a while it became an obsession; looking in the faces of people upon the street, trying to find another like her that would tell him everything he wanted to know. An implausibility. He would never detect another. No doubt she had warned others about him, fearful of the consequences. That was why she had run – fear of become know, fear of examination. If there were more like her they would not run the risk again. The white faces he would see, ones that were out of time, too bright, too white, blurred away into the ether, fearful of the consequences brought with the public slaughter of innocence. Perhaps there were no others. Perhaps he was going insane. Perhaps she had never either existed.

_i am sorrie that we nocked yoo out sherloc butt it had to be done i coud not be found out – yoo have a grate sense of personal pride in your'e work and i nowe that yoo woud have told everyone about me for the attention you woud get! The weather continyues fine were we are and i am with peeple like me – the things i have seen yoo woud not beleive! i see something new every day and I feel kwite alive again. I had better sign of befour yoo can deduce were I am! I miss being in London but it is nice to be away I have lived ther since I was a young child during the grate war – which hopfully ansers some kwestuions yoo never axed me. do not try to find me, Evangeline has freatened to kill yoo if she sees yoo again, it was only by perswaysion that she hit yoo so litely last time. I had grown kwite fond of yoo, little breather and fought it unfair for yoo to die that I may continyue to be dead if that makes sense. J._

A single postcard, sent with a Turkish stamp and undated. The author had had little formal education and neglected spelling and grammar. The author found writing difficult and the pastiosity was extremely heavy; she had carved the words into the page with a pen. Pencil lines had been drawn across the page so she could write neatly. The hood of the Y's indicated a low impulse control. The handwriting was cursive and round, indicating that the writer was female.

He wouldn't have needed all this to know who the author of this smudged, ink-stained card was. She had been gone for a year and this was the sole evidence he had of her continued existence. The card was pinned to the mirror, next to the poor photograph, where it taunted him unendingly.

* * *

**And now we reach the end of our tale. I hope you enjoyed my little supernatural wanderings - if you didn't, please don't hesitate to tell me. If you feel this ending is a bit shite, well, it would have been very easy to simply pair them off together, and have Joyce solving crimes with Sherlock, but everyone else is having characters that do that and if anything else, this story is an example of being as different as possible. Maybe I could even write a sequel, if there is enough interest.**


	7. A Tertiary Epilogue Part One

Time is a difficult concept. How exactly should we measure it? After all, when one is enjoying oneself, it passes by exceptionally quickly, like a cupped handful of sand streaming away. And in other times it passes by an inch at a time, slow as age, slow as a stone's heartbeat, if it had one. Stones were alive once he supposed; a train of thought that whilst rare, always made him think of her. Joyce. Impossible, fascinating, statuesque in a literal way, dead Joyce. Joyce with her stone's heartbeat, who seemed more alive than the million who lived in this city, his city, the city that had been her home for almost a century before she had fled and abandoned it behind her because of him. But mainly because of the murders she had committed. They had been friends, good friends. Perhaps she was one of the best friends a person like him could have. They had been similar in so many ways, with their dead hearts and love of the macabre. He had betrayed her, that was true enough, but does it count as a betrayal if they know your true nature? She had said herself she hadn't expected anything less of him. And the note… that single smudged note, with its misspellings and fingerprints…Joyce had been an obsession, plain and simple. She had said herself that she could inspire a childish devotion in the people around her, drawing them in like a moth to a flame. She could make them follow her to the depths of the earth or to the highs of the heavens if so wished, she had boasted once over coffee and cake.

He had scoffed at her words, scoffed at the immature boast of a selfish, self indulged girl. And now, a year since she had vanished, he knew those words to be true because for no logical reason, no sane reason, that was how he felt about _her_. Not that he was going to think about it.

He thought about Joyce for a fraction of a second before the blow hit him. Sentiment was a defect.

* * *

All he could feel was pain. Well, that was a lie. Oh, there were stabbing pains, sharp, burning stabbing pains, but there was something very comforting about the numbness that was sweeping up his body, racing towards his heart. It probably meant he was dying yet it wasn't something he felt he should worry about. There was nothing to care about anymore. He could feel himself slowing down inside, the body preparing itself for death, and it didn't feel so bad. He didn't even know where he was anymore. He'd lost track of everything around him.

A cold hand alighted on his forehead. It was like ice against his burning skin and felt amazing.

"You're drifting in and out of consciousness. Can you hear me? Sherlock, can you hear me?" The voice was familiar, but he couldn't place it. A small figure was stood to his left, but he couldn't see the face, just white and brown and shadows. He tried to tell them that he could hear them, but the words just wouldn't force themselves past his lips.

"Normally an insulting, yet snappy retort would have caused me to get pissed at you by now, but…you are looking at me, so I guess you can. You're in shock from the blood loss. You've been stabbed in the gut and in the shoulder, and I've staunched them both. Yes, I know, you're going to snap at me and say this is meant to be a fatal wound, but I've got it covered. You should be fine – barring accidents." The voice was brisk and almost cheerful. So that explained the pain in his abdomen (hands holding down gauze) but not how he felt inches from death – the numbness was continuing to spread.

"I'm dying." He managed to say with considerable difficulty.

"Oh yes. Most definitely." That did not fill him with hope. The voice grew only more cheerful.

"Get John. Need help."

"I told him to get out. People tend to listen when I tell them what to do. You're past any human help, I'm afraid. Luckily you've got me. Lie still and don't – fuss - so!" The hand moved away, to the side of his head, followed by the other one. The springs of the bed creaked slightly, and the figure moved towards him, pushing all the weight on the mattress. A leg was swung over, and Sherlock grunted as his helper sat on top of him. He began to struggle, but he was pinned down very easily.

"I told you not to fuss. I'm here to help you. I'm much stronger than you are and I could hurt you very easily so keep _still_. Now, I know my weight is hurting you – I'm a little heavier than the average modern woman – but just give me a minute." The now identified woman lent forwards, began sniffing around his neck. Her hair fell around his nose, tickling him. It smelt of nicotine, spices and strong perfume.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Don't worry. You're going to fall into unconsciousness in about half a minute I'd say and you shan't feel a thing. I'm going to clean your wounds and close them. Is that all right your highness?"

He would reply but he didn't have the means to do so. The weight of the woman on top of him is uncomfortable, cutting off his breathing, which is rattling around in his chest.

The pain in his abdomen increased. He would scream if he had the breath to do it. There is something in the wound tract now, something wet and cold and warm and moving.

As he falls into unconsciousness, he realises that it is a human tongue.

* * *

**I was a bit slow in writing more. Eeep. Well. Enjoy this tertiary epilogue.**


	8. A Tertiary Epilogue Part Two

To wake is to enflame his body with pain; to sleep is to surrender himself to the unyieldingly hostile depths of his unconscious mind. He could not tell you for how long he remained in this state, hovering upon the thin line which separates the mysteries of life and the mysteries of death. Blinding lights fell across him, but they were chased away by the comforting shades of the night. Voices floated from the void, sharp, hissing, cutting away at his mind. And, always, the shiver from cold, damp flesh.

Sherlock opened his eyes. Life had won out in his body. He was not sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

He had been left on a mattress. For a minute or so, he slowly watched light dance across the dull mildew of the ceiling above him. The room around him smells faintly fetid, of unwashed bodies and sweat, and it is a while before he realises that it is coming from him. He does not know how long he has been here. It can not have been weeks or months. His body is stiff and injured, but he cannot feel the weeping mess of sores upon his body. He can feel the sting of insect bites across his belly and chest, but they are old already. Someone dressed him in cheap trousers made of polyester, but they were made for a much smaller man. The hems flap around his ankles, encouraging the spread of sweat across his skin. The air is humid, thick with moisture, almost sponge like. The sweat of time has seeped into the mattress underneath him; it is moist and ripe against his back.

His fingers crawl along the mattress, gaining strength but already crying out from disuse. He finds the wound in his stomach. It had been delivered expertly into the soft space underneath his rib cage. It is a wound that is designed to kill a man within the space of thirty minutes. The wound is red and raw, new skin stretched tightly like a drum to knit his flesh together. There are no stitches on his wound. There are no bindings. He thought back to the last memory he has stored inside his mind. Can that be true? Is that what happened?

He begins to pull himself up. He edges his body out of the deep groove it has formed inside the mattress. His legs scream at him – his whole body is crying out for him to stop, for him to give up and to remain still and dead upon the mattress that has become home. He has never listened to the nagging chorus of his body. The room has been cheaply whitewashed; there are cheap pine floorboards beneath him that saw better days forty years ago. The light bulbs have been smashed in their fixtures. The room stinks of the pungent odour of death. By his feet, the floorboards have been bleached to a crimson black. It is blood. He knows it is his blood.

He staggered through a doorway which has had the door ripped from the hinges; the door that used to lie in the frame lies beneath the mattress he was laid on. And here he finds his saviour. Here is the woman who came to save him, the cold murderess, the dead woman who sees no mystery in life.

She lay in a stupor in a claw-foot bathtub, a black straw hat clutching at her face, and large, round sunglasses obscuring her face from the chaos in front of her. The room here stank of excess – vomit, alcohol, an undercurrent of sex. A slither of records lay upon the floor, having escaped from a battered record player. Cushions, half exploded, lay in tatters. Bottles, countless bottles glittering in their waste, and powdered remnants of substances with a stronger kick. And everywhere, black dots of dried blood, splattered around from where they had dribbled from the feast to the glutton.

And in the midst of this laid Joyce, an empress of expense, a doyenne of depravity. She was nude, her mottled dead flesh on full display to the discerning viewer. Her lips were black, for she was covered in blood. It stuck viciously to her skin in thick, smothering splotches. It was laced across her hands and forearms, before it snaked towards her shoulders and neck, before descended across her chest. He knew that some of that was his blood, and it sickened him. Her body was bloated with blood, and it had oozed out of her at every opportunity. She was disgusting. No one could drag their eyes from her. She was beautiful as she luxuriated in her cruelty. She was hideous in her wantonness.

"You can stop staring now. Or did you always want to see my tits?" She smiles, and it cracks apart the bloody mask. Her voice is wonderful and familiar in this alien room.

"How long have I been here?" He asks.

"Five days." She shrugs, tilting her head. "You needed to heal, so I thought I might have a few friends over while I was waiting. I… I haven't had blood in forever. Not since that night when – "

"When you brutally murdered a gang of teenage boys for daring to ask you for a light."

"Exactly. I fed on you and I had to have more. But you should be grateful for that." She paused to stand up straight, resting her left foot on the side of the bathtub. The blood from her orgy of feasting had dripped across her legs in light splashes, as if she had been skipping in the rain. "I healed you. I gave you life. To do that, I used those delightful friends of yours." She raised a hand to her mouth. She ran her tongue, a vivid velvet pink against the brown stains of blood, along her arm and across her palm. She shuddered, gnashing at her own lips from the taste.

"The friends who would have seen me dead. At least their lives had some sort of a purpose." He turned away from her. He could not stand to look at her while in her kingdom. It gave him the feeling of being a fly trapped in the web of a beautifully venomous spider. "It is remarkable that we happen to be operating in the same area of Turkey."

"Can't you just be happy to see me again?" Her feet patter behind him, quick little flashes of sound, and then she flings her arms around him. Her head lies in the middle of his back. She buries her face into his back, and he can feel the brush of her sharp teeth against his skin, like the sudden prickles of pins. "I'm happy to see you. I have missed you, and then I was told you had killed yourself and you won't believe me, I know, but I remembered the taste of your blood and the memory hurt, oh the memory _hurt. _I thought you might be strong enough to transition – "

"You were worried that I might not be able to solve your case if I died."

* * *

**Um, yeah.  
**

**I am super slow at updating/finishing this story. Life got in the way, but as I watched the latest series, I remembered this story again. I re-read it, and while I found some things lacking, I remembered how much fun I had writing it. And I decided to finish it, and give it some conclusion. If you read this originally, I hope you still enjoy it and like the new addition. If you are new to this story, I hope you have enjoyed it and the spirit in which it was created. A little bit of horror is always something nice to have.**


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